The Tempering of Men

by Sarah Monette

  The horse might have bolted—and wouldn’t that be fun?—but an alert soldier grabbed the reins below the bit and started pulling the frightened animal forward. Around him, soldiers were falling back, joining shields, linking up to the group. The teamster vaulted from the wagon seat and ran to join them.

  Skjaldwulf, who had expected a full frontal attack, was taken aback by the retreat. He loosed another arrow as Adalbrikt ran forward, wailing and waving his sword like a berserk, and then Skjaldwulf, too, was moving.

  His axe in his hand, he stepped out from behind the tree. Frithulf and Randulfr were shoulder to shoulder across the clearing; Geirulfr blocked the path ahead, and Ulfhoss quietly moved to block the path behind, Freyvithr with him. Mar was still back in the trees; through him, Skjaldwulf could feel the other wolves. He got a quick, strong flash of a horse herd, the mares circling to protect the foals. That wasn’t from Mar; Mar didn’t know any more about horses than Skjaldwulf did. Afi, maybe. Arakensberg was proud of their horses. There was a second strong flash, this time of what it felt like when a horse hoof connected solidly with a leaping wolf-body, and at the same time a spear jabbed out of the shield-square the foreign soldiers had made and ran Adalbrikt through.

  Skjaldwulf dared not shut his eyes, but he felt the urge all the way down to his guts. He’d seen too many young men die, and although he knew some wolfcarls would tell him Adalbrikt was just one more, he couldn’t feel it that way, couldn’t feel anything but pain and anger at the loss.

  Adalbrikt lurched back and dragged the spear away from the foreign soldier. If there had been fewer of them, and more lightly armed, that might even have been helpful, though not worth the life spattering bright red onto the dead leaves.

  A death worthy of a warrior, a death that would assure his place in the afterworld, if songs and sagas could be believed. Everything dies, and maybe it was better to die of a spear in the gut than rot away.

  Skjaldwulf was too old—or perhaps old enough—to argue it either way.

  Skjaldwulf looked across at Frithulf, who grimaced in answer—an expression made grotesque by his scars, but Skjaldwulf knew what he meant. Even if all six of them charged the foreign soldiers—herd, said the pack-sense—at once, the shield wall and spears left the advantage with the defenders. They could all die spitted like pigs. A four-sided shield wall, Skjaldwulf thought with reluctant admiration. It would never have worked against trolls, who had the size, and the numbers, to throw themselves against a shield wall until they bore it down beneath them, but it was a clever tactic against men on foot. Bows no use, axes no use unless you got right up close to them, and by then you’d already be dead.

  They had to lure or provoke the soldiers into breaking their square, or they’d be stuck here in a standoff until somebody ran out of food. Skjaldwulf was racking his brains for something that might serve against soldiers as disciplined as these when Dyrver came out of the trees to stand next to Ulfhoss.

  Dyrver was young—anxious and impatient—and it was a mistake none of the older wolves would have made, but Skjaldwulf was reminded that occasionally making a mistake could be the best thing to do. A soldier in the shield-square caught sight of Dyrver—a dark gray wolf, with light greenish-yellow eyes, not particularly large as trellwolves went, utterly unremarkable to Skjaldwulf’s way of thinking—and screamed. Not surprise, not excitement: Skjaldwulf had heard men dying beneath the hooves of the trell-smiths, and he knew a scream of terror when he heard one.

  As Skjaldwulf half-crouched, chest heaving, sidling left to cover the gap left by Adalbrikt’s fall, he sought out the eyes of the men he knew best. His gaze crossed Frithulf’s, and he knew Frithulf was calling Kothran just as he called Mar—as Geirulfr was calling Afi and Randulfr calling Ingrun. And Skjaldwulf was pleased to see that Ulfhoss had the sense to hand off his great-knife to Freyvithr. If the godsman was trained as a soldier, well—now was the time for him to use it.

  Now why would a well-trained, well-disciplined soldier scream at the sight of a wolf? Skjaldwolf remembered something Randulfr had said more than once—that the foreign raiders feared trellwolves like nothing else and thought them demons.

  A wild babble rose in the foreign soldiers’ strange tongue: it could be prayer, or arguments among men suddenly robbed of their commander.

  Skjaldwulf and Mar were the oldest, the most experienced, and Mar was Viradechtis’ chosen consort; the risk was theirs to take.

  Skjaldwulf paced forward, slowly, Mar at his side. The shield-square wavered. Mar, with a sense of the dramatic that Skjaldwulf would never have expected from him, drew his lips back and let a chest-shaking growl out between his teeth. From the other side Ingrun and Kothran howled in hackle-raising harmony.

  Perhaps if the foreign jarl had been among them, shouting commands and encouragement, the soldiers’ discipline would have prevailed. But Skjaldwulf’s first shot had removed that strength. The shield-square buckled and collapsed as the men on the near side fell back, breaking away from the advancing wolf.

  The foreign soldiers routed and ran.

  Fighting men was not like fighting trolls. It was both easier and uglier: easier because he could predict what a man would do when it was never quite possible to be certain of a troll, uglier because every time his opponent did what he expected, he was reminded he was fighting a man like himself.

  The wolves bewildered the foreign soldiers. They fell back against the wagon and regrouped, except the one Kothran hamstrung and the one Ingrun pulled down. But their shield wall was broken, and several of them had thrown their spears away to run. Wolves circled them, seeming to understand as instinctually as they hunted elk or trolls how to hunt men. And the men of the threat had their bows still.

  Skjaldwulf and his threat were about a third of the way into their butchers’ work when Afi called in the pack-sense, More strangers! More! More! More! That explained what this little band of soldiers was doing out here by themselves: they were meeting another band of soldiers. A larger band—Afi’s urgency could not be mistaken.

  Fall back! Skjaldwulf said into the pack-sense. Fall away! Luck and cunning had given them the upper hand, but they’d never be able to keep it. Better to disengage, get to Siglufjordhur, regroup. Although, he was thinking as they began cautiously to retreat, if the foreign soldiers were as terrified of trellwolves as they seemed, perhaps the five from Franangford would be worth more than a mere show of support to Randulfr’s brother.

  But for now they must disengage, and disengage quickly. Skjaldwulf fell back, a fighting retreat, Mar circling behind him. He felt his threatbrothers and their wolves withdrawing, too, and wished they had a moment to drag Adalbrikt from the field.

  At least Othinn would welcome him. Or possibly Freya, Skjaldwulf thought, realizing that Freyvithr crouched over Adalbrikt’s body, fearless in the midst of combat.

  Skjaldwulf expected the beleaguered foreign soldiers to accept their reprieve, to regroup and live another day. But the soldier he had been fighting, instead of pulling back with his shieldbrothers, lunged forward. Skjaldwulf blocked the blow on his axe haft, tried to brace himself to throw the man off, and his foot skidded on the wet, dead leaves.

  He fell. Falling, he tried to tell Mar to run, and then there was a brilliant flash of blackness behind his eyes and the clearing dissolved into gray, into black, into nothing.

  NINE

  Something scraped in the shadows; something rustled. Brokkolfr lifted his head, careful not to push with his elbows, and craned his neck to see better.

  There was, predictably, a shape behind each set of eyes, a shape dull and dark in color, like a hunched lump of stone—but they showed up as crooked silhouettes against the pale limestone behind. The torchlight wavered over something with the nap of cloth, something with the shimmer of metal. Kari’s torch had gone into the water. Brokkolfr’s flickered fitfully against the stone where he had thrust it, and Brokkolfr knew it would soon gutter out.

  “Svartalfar,” Brokkolfr said, aware of t
he relief coloring his voice and embarrassed by it. He sounded so damned young sometimes, and Kari was—well, not exactly older. But more worldly. “Maybe they’ll help pull you out.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Kari said softly. “Come on, Brokkolfr. I can’t feel my feet.”

  Indeed, as Brokkolfr edged slowly backward—and the two svartalfar watched silently, leaning on their staffs, the torchlight catching an occasional glint off their jewelry—the puddle of water that oozed from Kari’s clothes and soaked Brokkolfr’s frontside was frigid enough to make him shiver and curse under his breath. As for Kari, well, his teeth were rattling, and Brokkolfr didn’t think it was with fear.

  “How can this water be so cold when the other water is steaming?”

  “Different stream?” Kari stammered. Once Brokkolfr had Kari’s hips over the edge—tricky work, as it wanted to snag and crumble—he managed to drag his own feet out, and then the two men inchwormed back the way they had come.

  “Or maybe it flows in cold, and gets heated up somehow,” Brokkolfr offered. It was strange, chatting casually with Kari while the svartalfar watched like statues, but the traverse took a while. When they had regained the edge—and Brokkolfr’s torch—Kari tried to stand, yelped, and sank back. He muttered a curse under his breath. “I was hoping I’d been wrong about that.”

  Brokkolfr looked, a quick, wincing glance, and saw Kari’s foot hanging at the wrong angle from his leg. It was bad, then, and he had to focus himself consciously on the immediate problem instead of the babbling chorus of future worries.

  “I don’t know if I can get you out of here on my own,” Brokkolfr said, thinking of the scrambling they’d had to do to get this far.

  “I don’t think you can,” Kari said. He looked across the cavern to the svartalfar. “I guess we’ll have to see if they’ll help.”

  “You didn’t think they would.”

  “The svartalfar are funny about things like that. They’ve got rules, and they want to negotiate everything out ahead of time. I remember Tin’s jarls just about swallowed their tongues when they realized we’d gone and killed the trellqueen for them without even asking. Help me up.”

  Brokkolfr wanted to tell him to take his wet clothes off now, before they killed him—but he supposed that even if the water was chill, the air in the cave was warm enough that it would be a few moments before Kari was in dire trouble.

  So he helped Kari up, half-hauling, half-bracing, and supported Kari in a lurching, precarious progress toward the svartalfar, Kari cursing vividly under his breath with every hopping step. When they were still about ten feet away, the svartalfar pulled back and Kari said, “All right. Help me down again.” Brokkolfr did and then retreated out of the way—beside the torch, kindling a second from it—while Kari, who, sitting, was actually a little shorter than the svartalafar, said, “I am Kari Hrafnsbrother, of the Franangfordthreat. In the names of the smiths and mothers, I greet you.” He was panting a little with pain, but Brokkolfr judged it a very respectable speech.

  The second torch flared as Brokkolfr waved it, casting better light, and now he saw the svartalfar clearly. The closer and smaller also seemed to be lower-status, judging by the simpler embroidery on its robes. It came a step or two toward Kari, the hems of its layered garments sweeping the rock underfoot, and said something resonant and complex in a language Brokkolfr did not understand.

  Kari blinked. And then, haltingly, he answered. Brokkolfr could tell by the pauses and stammering that Kari barely knew what he was saying, and knew even less how to say what he meant. But whatever he got out seemed to satisfy the alf. Brokkolfr brought the torches over and crouched down beside Kari.

  The alf turned its head, the long twig-crooked nose showing the direction of its attention. Whatever it said, Brokkolfr could not have missed the tone of query. The larger one made a sound in return that sounded like agreement.

  The first cleared its throat. “I … am the apprentice Realgar,” it said. “The journeyman is Orpiment. We are in service to Mastersmith Antimony.”

  It hesitated, and Brokkolfr tried to remember if realgar was a metal or a mineral. A mineral, a poisonous one, he thought, one from which red pigment and arsenic could be derived. That would make the svartalf a male, if he understood the way they assigned their names. Or kennings, for maybe their names weren’t something they shared with just anyone. That was how it was in the stories, anyway.

  The alf cleared its—his—throat again. “What are you creatures doing here? Surface creatures do not come so deep.”

  Kari and Brokkolfr exchanged a look, and Brokkolfr didn’t need the pack-sense to know Kari was as disconcerted as he was. “Exploring?” Kari said. “We didn’t know … we didn’t know any svartalfar had stayed. No one mentioned it.”

  “Stayed?” Realgar said, his eyebrows drawing together sharply. The other one, Orpiment, said something, and the two alfar began an unmistakable argument. Brokkolfr glanced at Kari, who shook his head. Whatever of the svartalfar language he’d managed to pick up, they’d already exhausted his knowledge.

  “What did he ask you?” Brokkolfr whispered.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Kari whispered back. “They pronounce things differently than Tin and the other svartalfar I met. But I know he was asking about weapons and whether we intended to fight them. I said no.”

  “Good,” Brokkolfr said, and couldn’t help adding, “You need to get out of those wet clothes.” Shoulder to shoulder with Kari, he was almost being shaken by the allover tremors wracking the other man’s body.

  “You want me to strip right now?”

  “Not ideally, no, but I don’t want you to die. I’m a fisherman’s fifth son. I know about cold water.”

  “It’ll certainly persuade them we’re not a threat,” Kari grumbled, but he dragged his jerkin off over his head. Brokkolfr went to work on his boots, feeling gingerly around Kari’s injured ankle. He pulled the laces out completely on that side, stretching the soaked, chilled leather wide.

  Kari took a sharp breath but made no other complaint. “Sorry,” Brokkolfr muttered. Even through the wool of the sock, he could feel the heat and tautness of the injured flesh. Immersion in icy water had tamed the swelling, and it would also have numbed the pain.

  But that would not last.

  “Do it,” Kari said, and Brokkolfr gritted his teeth—his own teeth, as if what he was about to do could cause him pain—and pulled Kari’s boot from his foot as smoothly and easily as he could.

  “Ow,” Kari said on a long exhale when he was done. Even in the torchlight, Kari’s face shone pale through sweat.

  “It’s over,” Brokkolfr said. “Maybe if I strap it up we can limp out of here.” Making it worse. Making it more likely that Kari would be permanently crippled—

  “Your companion,” said Orpiment. “It’s injured?”

  “He is,” Brokkolfr said, wary. He had hoped, he realized now, to pass through this encounter in Kari’s shadow. It unsettled him to be required to make an accounting.

  “He will heal,” said Realgar. “But the cave ice he damaged was the result of centuries of growth. How will you make reparations to the cave for that?”

  “Reparations to the … the cave?”

  The cave is alive? The cave is a living thing? The cave has … property rights? Brokkolfr shook his head as if he could shake the confusion out of it.

  “It can be healed,” Orpiment said—to Realgar rather than to the wolfcarls, which made Brokkolfr wonder if the journeyman was taking their side.

  Realgar glared at Orpiment. The alf’s eyes sparked torchlight like gems secret in the caverns beneath his bushy brows. “A crude attempt could be made,” he said. “But such shaping is never as intricate as the natural state of the stone.”

  “Hsst!” Orpiment said. He lapsed back into the alfish speech, as rapid as a drumbeat now, and after a few halfhearted protests Realgar looked chastened.

  Kari nudged Brokkolfr, and Brokkolfr realized that he was st
aring. He dropped his eyes, glancing at his werthreatbrother instead. The expression on Kari’s face wasn’t censure, though—it was suppressed excitement, like the face of a man holding the throw of knucklebones. Brokkolfr tilted his head in a question; Kari, having skinned himself down to his breechclout, gave him a subtle little headshake as warning.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he murmured. “I’m not sure—”

  If he had been about to say more, it was interrupted. Orpiment’s lean tree-limb of an arm reached out, spanning the space between them, and touched Brokkolfr lightly on the shoulder. Brokkolfr froze, feeling the long jeweled fingers like a skeleton hand, aware of how close those filigree-reinforced talons lay to his throat.

  “You must come with us to the mastersmith,” Orpiment said. “Antimony will know what to do with you.”

  “Take my shirt and vest,” Brokkolfr said to Kari. He slithered out of them quickly and all at once, brushing the svartalf’s hand aside, so the shirtsleeves still stuck through the holes in the jerkin. Kari took shirt and vest without a word and struggled into them.

  Brokkolfr turned to Orpiment and said, “I need to bind my friend’s ankle. And he cannot walk far.”

  “We shall carry him,” Orpiment said. “Have no fear.”

  * * *

  Carry him they did, on a stretcher made from their staffs and Realgar’s embroidered outer cloak or robe. Brokkolfr had never seen svartalf undergarments before. Under his mantle, Realgar’s hunched body was clothed in a mud-colored shift of some fabric more sheer and smooth than lawn. It clung revealingly, leaving Brokkolfr uneasily assessing the power of the svartalf’s haunches and thews, the sharp-angled lever arms of his joints. His torso swayed between his limbs with each step, as dwarfed by their strength as a frog’s.